JACK COWAN: Bush's silence is admirable quality in former president

SAN ANGELO, Texas - Did you hear what George W. Bush said the other day? Actually, until last week you didn't, because he hadn't said anything, at least nothing for public consumption.

Bush went "poof" on the afternoon of Jan. 20. He had his first actual speaking engagement last week, but it wasn't recorded, and you had to search to find anything that might be considered critical of President Obama. It was the first time he had uttered a public word in defense of himself and his administration.

Not only do I admire that about him, it reaffirms my initial belief that Bush is a decent man who wanted to do what was right for America.

I don't agree with many of the things he did. In fact, in many of the most important areas, I thought he was horribly misguided. Yet I appreciate his selflessness in declining to snipe at a president tasked with leading the country in difficult times.

Staying quiet can't have been easy. Even Obama has taken some unnecessarily harsh shots at the previous administration, but even if he hadn't there are countless other voices trashing everything that happened in the eight years before the last Inauguration Day. How do you let all that go unanswered?

Bush has done that because to do otherwise would hurt the country. He would rather take the brickbats than say something that diminishes the presidency.

He did slip last week in Michigan when asked whether Obama was leading the nation toward socialism and said, "The verdict is still out on that." But it was a mild rebuke in a semi-private setting, and his overall behavior over the past four months suggests he wishes he hadn't said even that much about his successor.

Dick Cheney certainly hasn't felt any such compunction. The former vice president who was scarcely available for interviews while in office suddenly is everywhere, saying exactly what Obama is doing wrong and what the consequences will be. I doubt anyone believes Cheney asked Bush's permission to launch his attacks.

The one time it appears Bush couldn't restrain himself was when Vice President Biden told a story about Bush saying he was a leader and Biden supposedly replied, "Mr. President, look over your shoulder. No one is following." Bush's presidential adviser Karl Rove said: That didn't happen. It's unlikely he would have said Biden was lying if he hadn't checked with his former boss and gotten the OK to squash Biden's assertion.

Actually most presidents have held their fire after leaving office. Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter became a little too partisan, but it was several years after leaving the Oval Office. Most seem content to take the role of senior statesman most of the time.

We're lucky in that way. There's no law forcing them to fade away upon leaving office. There's no requirement that they suddenly stop trying to affect the course of the nation as they did for four or eight years, and which most of them yearned to do for many years before that.

It must be especially tempting when the president who replaces you wants to do everything different than your way. How do you purposely make yourself irrelevant in one day?

It's not hard to envision an ex-president forming a sort of shadow government that could undermine the new president. There always are plenty of people so upset with the election results that they would join the former leader in a not-so-loyal opposition.

Bush might have found it difficult to be a serious threat to the nation's political stability even if he wanted to because he left with such low approval ratings. Clinton could have. Even after the scandals of his second term he enjoyed considerable popularity, and after the crazy Florida recount tainted Bush's victory, nothing except tradition and propriety kept him from attacking the fragile new presidency.

Maybe, too, that tradition is so entrenched that it dissuades any who might have thoughts of undercutting his replacement. Americans have a sense of fair play and they expect the outgoing administration to get out of the way and give the new team a chance.

Except for Gerald Ford, Bush is probably the president who was least driven to have that position in the last 50 years. I think he served not because he had to, but because he ought to. If I'm right, then probably it's not so hard for him to stand aside and not try to diminish the new president's authority. It could be a scary time if we had an ex-president who wasn't so selfless.